Small, fast ships approaching from the stern with no IFF… Pirates. And not the fun kind.
I shake my head. Well, maybe this isn’t so bad after all. I don’t see any planets or stars nearby. I didn’t want to take this ship back to Earth anyway.
“Hey. Let’s go commit some acts of irony. Battle stations.”
I’m always at battle stations. I have nowhere else to go.
“I know. I just wanted to say it.”
122
Mega-Dinobot roared as it slammed Luke against the side of the formally five-star hotel, leaving him dazed and in a Luke-sized crater.
“I don’t think our current plan of ‘get beat to death by a robot’ is working, boss,” TK said over the comms.
Luke agreed. He’d managed to calm himself down enough to regain some control, but they simply lacked the power to stop this thing. He was no mathematician, but at this point, the property damage probably outweighed the six—no, seven—vaults and two diamond stores the Mega-Dinobot had swallowed. Luckily, probably because of the diligence of TK and Fleet, no civilians had suffered injuries or death.
Luke and Kate simply weren’t enough to stop this thing. They’d settled for slowing it down until Carlos could get free to come help.
“Luke,” Kate’s voice called over the comms a split second before she materialized beside him in all her glory. It never ceased to amaze him how he was a sweaty mess after fighting this thing for an hour, and Kate looked like she was ready for a night on the town. The fading sun glinted off the green jewel she wore around her neck—a gift from Amelia, Kate’s best friend, and Luke’s girlfriend.
Don’t forget missing. Long-time missing girlfriend. Amelia was going on a year and a half missing. Kate assured him she was still alive—just too far away to be reached.
Focus, Lancaster.
“What’s the plan, Domino?” he asked in his overly serious voice. She flashed him a smirk.
“Plan? Getting your butt kicked isn’t a plan?”
He shook his head, “Not a good one.”
“I think it’s leaving,” she said, pointing at the six-story-tall robot as it turned toward the setting sun and began its march to the sea.
“Just like the last one. Wreak havoc, rob a bunch of high-value targets, then retreat to the sea. If it gets to the ocean, we’ll never be able to follow it.”
Kate nodded, sympathy plain on her face. She reached out with her remaining hand and touched Luke’s shoulder. A second later they were a mile away, watching the Dinobot lurch toward them.
“Fleet, I know you’re tired, man, but… civilians,” Luke said over the comms.
“I know, I know,” Fleet replied in his Bostonian accent. “That’s my song, ‘civilians, civilians,” he said in a mock high pitch voice.
“TK? Any chance you could lift enough water to drown it? Maybe short something out?”
“It’s worth a shot. How long do I have to get to the—” air whooshed over the radio for a second, “—Never mind, Fleet dropped me off. I’ll start filling a bucket.”
Luke reached up and flicked the lens on his goggles—at least they were still intact—selecting magnification until he could see TK on the pier, forming a huge ball of water.
“Master Lancaster, sir, there is a call coming from the Pentagon. Major Nelson seems quite insistent.” Milton’s upper-class British accent never seemed out of place or worried. Amelia had really broken the mold with him. With Epic gone, he’d taken over managing the financials for the team and pretty much everything but the actual field operations. If Amelia had built him a robot body, then he could probably do that.
“The Pentagon? What?” Luke glanced over at Kate, who gave him an awkward shrug. With her left arm missing it made her movements seem unnatural, even though she’d gotten better at it over the last year and a half. Not that he saw her as much as he would like to. She only came out in emergencies anymore.
“Major Force? Nelson here. Listen, we have a situation.”
“You think?” Luke replied with sarcasm. “I’m doing the best I can, Major, but this Dinobot is damned near indestructible. I have no idea what it’s made of, but we can’t stop it. The best I can—”
“Dinobot? What? No, there’s a bogey inbound on your location. We just picked it up on our sensors. NASA thinks it’s a meteorite about the size of a destroyer. It’s going to come down right in your area. You need to evac—”
Luke cut him off, “On it.” Closing the channel to the Pentagon, he switched to the team channel. “New plan; there’s a meteorite coming in and it’s going to smash this part of San Diego.”
Milton put a graphic on his goggles, and everyone else’s too, showing the estimated damage the object would do when it hit.
“Luke,” Fleets voice wavered over the radio. “I’m already exhausted man, I can’t evacuate six square miles of ocean-side population.”
The graphics updated with the estimated population of the area… eighteen thousand. There was no way.
“Save everyone you can. Focus on kids and women,” he told Fleet.
“What, are men not important?” TK asked.
“If it was me, I’d want my wife saved before I was,” Luke replied.
Kate touched him, nodding toward the Dinobot. “What about that?”
“We let it go,” he said, taking off in a jog to leap to the next building. A countdown appeared on his goggles. Two minutes… that just wasn’t enough time. The crushing weight of the moment forced him to one knee and before he knew it his breath was coming in ragged gulps.
“Luke, it’s okay,” Domino was there, hand on his shoulder whispering in his ear. He didn’t feel better, which meant she had her necklace on and wasn’t using her empathic powers. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he had seen her without it.
“Is it? Ten thousand people are going to die, Kate, and we can’t do a damn thing about it,” he growled. “Just watch.”
“We can never save everyone,” she whispered back. “Not even our own.”
“You must clear the blast zone now. You are out of time,” Milton’s voice came over the radio. Kate wrapped a comforting arm around his shoulders and in a blink… they were clear.
“Everyone sound off,” he commanded.
“Tess, here.”
“Fleet…” he had to pause a second while sucking in huge volumes of air, “present.”
“Teddy here. I’m secure. I’ve alerted EMS—other counties are mobilizing S&R to help.”
“Thanks, Teddy. I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Luke replied.
He forced himself to watch, looking toward the East where the fireball descended from the sky—coming right at them. He caught a glimpse of the Dinobot as its foot hit the beach, making for the freedom of the ocean. Not only were people going to die today, but the bad guys were also going to get away.
“Worst. Day. Ever.” He muttered under his breath.
The fireball grew on the horizon like a strobe light of fire. Light flashed off of it while the outside burned up, bits and pieces exploding off of it, descending into the foothills outside the city.
“Fleet, there are going to be some brush fires, see what you can do, when you can do it.”
“Roger, boss.”
He watched it grow closer—even three miles away he could hear the roar and feel the heat of it.
“You don’t have to watch,” Kate told him.
“Yes, I do.”
As the fireball streaked toward the city something became apparent. It was going to miss the town.
“Milton?” Kate asked, “Wasn’t it going to hit the city?”
“Yes, Ma’am, it was. Recalculating…”
“Don’t sweat it,” Luke said. “It’s delicious irony.”
As they watched, the fireball the size of a navy destroyer flew over the city, the heat from its passing wilting trees and igniting small fires. The deafening roar grew louder as the sonic boom hit them.
The Dinobot lumbered along, knee-high in
ocean water, not paying attention behind it once the protocols to retreat had kicked in. As long as no one followed, or actively tried to stop it, its job was done, and it had to return to base.
It paid no heed to the meteorite falling at over seven times the speed of sound.
Luke watched the fireball collide with the Dinobot. The resulting explosion sent out a shockwave that pushed the ocean back and filled the air with fire and debris and a mushroom cloud rose up from where it hit. Windows for two miles around shattered, car alarms wailed, and lights vanished as the power died.
“Damn!” Kate yelled.
“Did that just happen?” Fleet asked in awe.
Vaporized ocean water filled the area with a dense fog that drifted over several square miles in the breeze.
“Let’s get down there, people, and make sure no one was hurt.”
When Luke and Kate appeared on the beach, the first thing they saw was money and diamonds… the beach shined like rhinestones from the thousands of diamonds the Dinobot had stolen. Hundred-dollar bills were strewn about like so much garbage, more washing in each second with the flotsam. Intermixed with the money and gems, parts of the Dinobot were scattered about, a piece here and there. Luke reached down and picked up a small section. It weighed far less than he expected.
The black metal looked awfully familiar.
“Kate,” he said, handing it to her.
“Is this…?”
“I think so. No wonder we couldn’t hurt it.”
Fleet appeared a few seconds later, dropping TK off before falling on his butt and crashing to the beach. “I’m done. Call me a cab.”
Tess let out a whistle. “Ay, Boss-Man, you wouldn’t mind if—” she said, reaching out to a little mountain of one-carat diamonds.
“Not a single one, Tess. Not one.” He said without looking at her. They got lucky. Or the bad guys got unlucky.
Tess sniffed her disapproval before taking a seat in the sand next to Fleet. “At least Glacier missed out on all the fun. Finals suck,” she muttered while looking forlornly at the diamonds littering the beach.
They all stood there, listening to the water wash against the shore and marveling at the destruction the meteorite had caused while not hurting anyone.
“What was that?” Kate asked.
“That was me sticking the landing,” Amelia said with a grin as she walked out of the artificial fog. “Nailed it.”
123
Time stands still as we embrace. It’s like a dream—Luke’s warm hands around my waist, our foreheads touching as I gaze into his crystal blue eyes and he gazes back into mine. It’s only been a couple of days—or a week—I’m not actually sure. But it feels like forever. Even the smell of the sea can’t hide his wonderful scent.
“Ahem,” Domino says politely.
“Right. Everyone, hugs.” As soon as I speak the gang rushes me, hand slaps on my back and kisses on my cheek and a million questions all at once.
Luke glances at Kate—worry flashes across his face. There’s something wrong here.
“Amelia,” Kate starts—
Everyone is in new costumes. Kate is fully healed and… oh crap. Her hair. It’s down to her shoulders?
“I think she figured it out already,” Luke says. The team backs off for a second and I stumble backward and take a knee. I need to breathe… it was just a couple of days I tell myself as I squeeze my eyes shut.
“How long… and please don’t say more than a month…”
“Maybe we should get you home hon? I’m sure your apartment would be more comfortable…” Kate says in her soothing tone. The tone she uses to calm people who are freaking out. Like me.
“Epic, how long?”
Before he can answer, Luke does. “One year, seven months, three days, and this morning.” The look he gives me says he missed me every day. I reel at the information, putting one hand against the sand.
It will be okay, Amelia.
“Epic, what happened?”
The pod we woke up in—it was a cryopod. The freezing process must have stopped us on the molecular level. When I booted back up, I had detected only a few days had passed. I am sorry Amelia. I did not tell you upon-entry because you had more important things to worry about.
“It’s okay, buddy. Not your fault… a whole year, though.”
The team remains silent, listening to half of the conversation I have with my AI companion. We’re not back in their com loop so they can’t see what he’s saying to me. My head swims with all of this and I really need to lie down. Of course, that isn’t going to happen.
“Luke,” I motion for him. He gathers me up in his arms like I never left, and I rest my head against his chest. A feeling of safety descends on me like I haven’t had in forever. Or since the last time I was in his arms.
“Let’s get you home,” he whispers into my ear. “Kate?”
“I’m so glad you’re home, Amelia.” She says as she places a hand on my shoulder. “Tess, take the Emjet and meet us back at the Spire.”
“Will do, Boss Lady.”
124
The next morning, after a pizza, Coke, and a good night’s sleep, I feel like a million bucks. It’s almost like I never left. Wheeling through the Spire on an inspection tour turns out to be a ton of fun. Milton continued to improve the HQ while we were away, and Epic vanished for a good hour when we got back; I think he sees Milton as a son. I can only imagine the feelings AIs might have for each other. Not that Milton would ever say—Epic really nailed the whole “stiff upper lip” the Brits have going.
In my absence, they built a second spire for the hangar and a sky bridge to attach it. The hangar now has three Emjets and eight ZPFM hover bikes: Milton designed them based on the ones Cat-7 used to provide the teams. Apparently, AI-Milton decided that my twenty billion dollars were enough for Mars Tech Global to replace Cat-7 as the premier technology adviser to the super teams. New rules and regulations passed by DMHA prohibit one company from having more than fifteen percent control of the teams—a rule I wholeheartedly approve. Milton secured technology rights; communications, transport, and security, all provided by MTG. And, since Kate knew I was alive, they never declared me dead, just missing.
I smile as I come to the Rec Room. It’s almost like I never left.
“What’s an Xbox One-X?” I ask upon seeing the shiny black box under the giant screen TV in the room.
“That, my dear Amelia,” Carlos says from behind me, “Is the most advanced gaming system in the world. Even if they haven’t put out enough games for it yet.”
“Carlos!”
I spin so fast my hair whips me in the face. He kneels down and wraps me in a hug. I almost put on the armor so I can stand shoulder to shoulder with him, but after a couple of weeks (to me) in the suit, I would rather not don it for a while. After what feels like five minutes he pulls back and looks me right in the eye, “I missed you, Niña.”
“Me too. Listen, I have to tell you something. I guess you may already know, but not the details.”
His eyes grow hard in a way my old Carlos never would’ve.
“Is it about Pythia?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. The tone in my voice confirms for him what he already suspected.
“When she didn’t come back, I can’t say I wasn’t worried. Then, after a few months, and after we found out about the…” he mimes an explosion with his hands, “in the Th’un system… well, I figured it out. She saved you, didn’t she?”
I nod. I have to blink a few times to clear the mist from my eyes. “I was all ready, you know?”
He nods, then stands up and wheels me over to the couch so he can sit down next to me.
“I’d sent Kate back and made sure Luxilla was safe. I was good with it. Epic and I rigged a singularity—”
“That’s a black hole, right?” he asks.
“Yep,” I sniff, “I don’t even know why they had one on their planet—it was stupid, but they did. I rigged it to break out of co
ntainment and just as it was about to, she showed up. Carlos… she said the world still needed me and I had to find my way home.”
He slips one of his massive hands over mine. A stark reminder of the new Carlos. “You did, Niña, you did it.”
“I know—but a year and a half.” I playfully slug him in the shoulder. “You’re older than me now.”
He quirks an eyebrow at me, “I hadn’t thought of it like that. I guess that means you’ll listen to me now?”
We look at each other for a moment before we burst out laughing.
“Seriously though, Amelia. I’m so glad you’re back. When you didn’t return and Lux told us about the black hole,” he says, his voice wandering off as he looks down. Tears well up in him, “And then Pythia didn’t come back. I thought… I thought I’d lost my way.”
I reach out and touch his chin, pushing his head up to look at me. “Carlos, you’re one of the most wonderful people in the world. You’d never lose your way for very long. Besides, you’d have Monica to bring you back—”
He glances away from me for a second, “Yeah about that. We aren’t dating anymore.”
Well, it wasn’t like they were engaged or anything. I guess a year and a half can do a lot to people.
“You parted amicably I hope?”
He nods, “Oh yeah. I adore her. She’s awesome, it’s just… it didn’t work out is all.”
I smile, not wanting to press the issue. I don’t see any pain around his eyes, which is nice.
“How did you come back, anyway? I thought the Q-drive you built into the suit wasn’t working…”
I let him change the subject. I know breaking up can be painful—I guess even if both parties agree to it.
“It doesn’t have a navigation system. When Pythia activated it and tossed me through the gate, I went wherever.” While I talk, I reach over to the mini-fridge next to the couch and snag a Coke. After a few weeks of nutrient paste, this is heaven. I hold one up to him and he gladly takes it. “When I came out of the first gate, I got hit by some kind of freeze ray.”
Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 67